


Felix and Tom history interweaves

by BluesFics



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Miraculous Ladybug - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 23:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4938070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BluesFics/pseuds/BluesFics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felix was Chat Noir once but never again. Gabriel Agreste has a history and it interweaves with Tom Dupain. A possible history for Miraculous Ladybug.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic. Please be gentle. I hope you enjoy! Now mildly edited! XD

Chapter 1: Beginnings 

Little Felix, quiet Felix…..  
Félix Agreste had never, ever been in contention for being the favored son. He was the product of a drunken affair with a maid and his father had his legitimate heir six years before Felix had even been any kind of perverted twinkle in his father’s eye. He was, by the age of five, sure the only reason he hadn’t been packed off with his mother when she had been released from contract was because she had some sort of witch craft at her disposal. He would never truly know, he would never be allowed to meet her.

He was viewed, by the entire household, simply as the mistake that wasn’t going to go away; a costly, infuriating, never to be talked about mistake. Shy and retiring by nature naturally this made a young Felix very quiet and very alone. The blue eyed blond hid from his brother quietly, studied with his tutors quietly, ate quietly in his designated corner of the dining table quietly and spent the vast majority of his time in the family library, away from the windows and as out of sight as he could manage. Completely starved of any and all attention a normal child received resulted in Felix turning to day dreams to keep him occupied, though even in those blissful dreams he was alone. He had no idea how to interact with people at all.

It was to be expected then that going to school for the first time, at the age of eleven, had been horrendously frightening for Felix. In fact from his first day to the end of the first year he swore it was the very worst thing that had ever happened to him. Looking back though, he had to admit, at least it had allowed him to meet Marinette Dupain and Annabelle Goh and then two years later Plagg (though by god he was NOT thankful at the time and wouldn’t be for some time).

Big Tom, loud Tom…  
Tom Dupain was always the apple of his father’s eye. Born after his mother had been told there were no more children to be expected, he was, in his father’s words “A last little gift from the angels above”. Regularly spoiled along with the first gift the angel’s provided, his big sister Marinette or Nettie as per the family nickname, he was brought up with all the love that his little home above the bakers shop could provide. His young memory was filled with flour and loving laughter in semi-equal amounts.

Young Tom was exuberant, fast growing, always in everyone’s business and, although well meaning, something of a pain in the ass. The green eyed brunette worked with his father in the morning making the myriad of breads they sold, stole chocolate buttons from his mother in the afternoon when she made sweets and met his sister after school each day with a sweet role to share and a really out of key rendition of anything he heard on the radio.

His sister and he, unlike many siblings, were always very close. Nettie made time for him almost every day and when he finally did attend school she was always there to walk him home. Though this could be a curse too as Nettie was rarely on time, still it was lovely to walk with his sister, especially because there was always a batch of her cookies stored in Nettie’s lunchbox for them to share. Maybe it was this that made Tom so blind to her. To him Nettie was just always tired after she turned thirteen, also klutzy enough to bruise herself almost everywhere. Years later it still stung that she kept so much from him. Looking back he wonders how he was so blind. Looking back he wonders how anyone missed the fact that the hero, later heroes, of Paris where really just children and he worries for the new children who have taken over the job.


	2. Life in the fast lane

Chapter 2: Life in the fast lane

Silent Felix, caterwauling Chat Noir…  
For Felix finding Plagg and excepting the kwami’s offer had been the best bad decision he had ever made. He could live out his early daydreams and be a hero! However the trails that had beset him in the beginning almost made him give up. Plagg was annoying to a fault, refused to explain his powers, transformed him without his consent and his costume was horrid! Who wears thigh-high boots? Well apparently Felix wore thigh high boots and he was not impressed! Not to mention he was cursed with bad luck and unable to remove the ring and kwami from his life until he could find this ‘ladybug’. It didn’t stop there either once he had found her he had to get her to kiss him. OH DEAR GOD what had he signed up for?!

Slowly though, the good came through. Chat Noir had no permanently disappointed father, didn’t have a brother who hated him, didn’t have to deal with disappointed tutors or mean staff and certainly didn’t have to deal with a house where the only sanctuary was the library. Chat Noir could jump free across the skyline of Paris and watch the stars from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Felix could decide, after compromising with Plagg, who he wanted Chat to be. He could be daring, be a hero and he could even try being charming like some of the boys at school and once he did find Ladybug he couldn’t help but like her, even if she was a feisty ball of red rage. It was worth the tiredness, the bruises and the danger and if he could just get this little blue eyed, pig-tailed girl called Marinette and her best friend (Annie or whatever) to leave him in peace at school it would all balance out.

Big loud little Tom, big quiet big Tom  
Life is good for teenage Tom. He helped his father in the shop, had lots of friends at school, laughs and jokes with his sister and her best friend Anna and goes hero hunting with Sabine on the weekends. His sister is his closest confidant and he is hers judging by the number of times he helps patch her up after she manages to hurt herself again. He likes her friend Anna too, the redhead with amazing green eyes is amazingly good for his sister and Nettie refers to them both as her green eyed angels.

Sabine is the highlight of his week. He was never really interested in Ladybug or Chat Noir but as long as he could spend time with the ever cheerful, ever prepared Sabine he thinks it will be worth it. His sister gently ribs him about Sabine constantly, asking regularly if Sabine was sure she had spotted Ladybug or whether it was just Tom’s flushed face in the crowd. If he ever told his sister how dangerous it actually is when he and Sabine go hunting he thinks even she would stop him. So he keeps all of it to himself, even the time an Akuma attacked him and Sabine directly and they had had to run and hide in a men’s public room at the train station. Sabine’s was upset about that for a month!


	3. The bad and the good

Chapter 3 - The bad and the good

End of Chat Noir, Beginning of Gabriel Agreste…  
Chat Noir is fast, free and very, very cheeky! Three years of his super hero career has bought him so much. Felix has grown from a shy gangly child into a strong minded, sharp witted, dangerously handsome young man, with an excellent best friend and a lovely lady to call his own.

He is almost surprised at how easily his quips and flips come to him now and just as well that they do because things are getting more and more dangerous. This is Hawkmoths final assault and everything is going to hell in a handbasket. All the Akumas they have fought are back, be it in shadowy form and things are tight. He dodges blows, ducks and dives and allows himself a minute time to think of his dearest Pixie girl, his Anna, who sits at home worrying her soul case out about him and Nettie Dupain.

Chat Noir is Felix’s favourite person to be. He doesn’t mind being Felix anymore but Chat is out of this world! Fast and free, cursed but happy, Chat glides from rooftop to rooftop relishing the cold night air against his cheeks….. He loves this so much

Or at least he did until that night. Hawkmoth needed to be defeated, that was the end goal but it rang so hollow in the end that it didn’t and still doesn’t feel like a victory at all. His Ladybug took the final hit for him, she lies dying in his arms, her magic weak. He has no time to grieve for Ladybug because it’s Marinette, his dearest friend Nettie, who lies beneath the mask and he must save her, but he knows it’s far too late. Her kiss is weak but Plagg says its enough, his usual goofy tone absent leaving a voice that is as hollow as Felix feels. He carries her to her home, being slowly trailed after by Plagg who holds Ladybug’s grieving Kwami. Felix delivers the news to her family, voice brittle like broken glass, as he leaves their home he slams the door on Chat Noir and leaves him to rot. 

He drops his ring and her earrings down a storm drain and bids both kwamis adieu for what he hopes will be an eternity. He walks home in the biggest storm Paris has seen in years but it might have well not been there for all he can think of is his Pixie, his Anna and how she’s never going to laugh like Nettie could make her again. He wishes to never feel this way ever again. He starts a plan; he will take his father’s offer, take the place of his departed brother and make a name for himself that has nothing to do with Chat Noir and little to do with Felix Agreste.

Tom alone, Tom and Sabine…  
Tom’s start to adulthood has but a single thing wrong. Put in those terms it seems idyllic but it’s far from anything like idyllic. Grief spills through him, pulling at all other feelings, events and experiences, crushing them down to a plain grey numbness. The grief is like his own, personal, supermassive black hole that blows through his carefully constructed universe, leaving him with fragments and chaos. Good and bad hardly matter once his sister is gone. 

His friends give him space, his school gives him time, his parents give let him do what he needs but it’s the absence of what she would do, where she should be that drives him crazy. He feels all the negative emotions he can conjure about it all at once and at all times, like his heart is playing the most aggressive and dark game of twister ever. HOW COULD SHE NOT TELL HIM? Why didn’t she trust him? What could he have done if he had known? WHY COULDN’T SHE SEE HOW IMPORTANT SHE WAS JUST BEING MARINETTE? Why was his sister chosen? COULDN’T HAVE BEEN SOMONE ELSE’S SISTER WHO IS GONE? It’s all he can do not to snap at Sabine, who so idealised the hero Ladybug, the hero that put his sister in the ground.

Sabine also gives him space but it’s different, she is always there but never pushes and Tom fancies the only time he doesn’t feel the grief is when she smiles at him again. It takes time but eventually he wakes slowly from the pain and the loss. Now, years after the grief has sanded down to sadness, he sees it was like colour bleeding into the morning but at the time it was walking through an unknown place with a blindfold on. He walks forward, Sabine with him, carrying Sabine’s promise to never leave him close to his bruised heart. He walks to the light of the future ahead, knowing Sabine and his sister spirit will always be with him. Time heals all wounds.


	4. Fashion and babies

Chapter 4: Fashion and Babies

Gabriel and a Pixie, loss and gain…  
Felix Agreste and Annabelle Goh become Gabriel and Abigail Agreste. Felix, as per the agreement with his father, has assumed his brother’s name and media image. Bleach has rendered his hair the same platinum colour as his brother’s hair and bleach to his brother’s suppressed party lifestyle has given Felix the freedom to meld into his brother’s image without media suspicion or backlash. It’s an empty stage for him and his new wife both. The separation is meant to help them forget the blue eyes, pigtails and bright laughter but it only deepens Annie’s hurt. She hides it from him but he can tell. Life, for now, is hard. 

The man he has had to become, Gabriel Agreste, supposedly doesn’t like secrets but his life is full of them. He has no idea where his brother actually went and his father kept that secret as well as his animosity for his youngest son until his death. Once the old bastard is gone, life get a little easier but there is still pain in his Pixie’s eyes and he doesn’t really know if he can ever fix it.

Felix had been a dreamer, Chat Noir had lived in the moment but Gabriel, he finds out, is a planner. He begins with a little high street shop selling his and Abigail’s designs but even while he paints the walls and puts together clothing racks of their first little shop, he plans for bigger things. 

Taking the helm of his father’s watch making company in the next few years allows him to accelerate his plans. He and Abigail turn the company into their dream: Agreste fashion. Everything seems to be going to plan! There are parties and there are toasts of congratulations and Abigail seems to become more Annie once more in the face of the whirl wind of approval. Then, like magic, there is suddenly talk of babies and prams and Abigail’s eyes back to being Annie’s eyes. They shine across the room at him like fireworks. The party he announces their upcoming child, Adrien, is simply the best night of his life.

Oh how Gabriel wishes time could have stopped there….

Tom and Sabine and baby, memories preserved…  
Tom is proud the day he can call his patisserie one of the best in Paris, but that pride pales in comparison to the pride he feels when he learns he’s going to be a father. The life he and Sabine have built together has been wonderful and thanks to his wife’s unbeatable business sense it looks like life can only get sweeter. He would have never imagined this life years ago. After Nettie was gone he couldn’t even look at baking, it’s only through Sabine constantly encouraging him that he returned to baking at all. At the thought of the past the familiar pain in his chest becomes present; he walks to the mantle and bestows a soft kiss to Nettie’s photo. He swears he can hear her sometimes and for this fragment of time it’s her singing like she did when he was little and frightened. The melody calms his heart, allowing him to return to the present with a smile.

Having a baby is torturous and he wasn’t even giving birth to her! He marvels at Sabine’s strength and gently rubs his hand over her knuckles as she holds their child for the first time. Exhaustion and stress abated as he looks at their own miracle from the angels above. After an appropriate amount of time with her mother and a full belly he is finally able to hold his daughter for the first time. He takes her gingerly in his arms, holding her gently like he was taught. 

His daughter is gorgeous and he gives her the greatest gift he can think of to celebrate her arrival. “Hello Marinette” he whispers to her, his sister’s voice in his ears and his baby girl blinking up at him. Sabine smiles a cloudless smile and at last it feels like an old wound is closing, it still stays scarred but not painful anymore. He looks towards the future and it’s so bright he can barely stand to look. He can’t wait to see what happens next.

Unfortunately what comes next is a lot of sleepless nights but his little girl grows fast, eats well and to his never ending joy looks like a little clone of her mother. He likes his life even with the sleeplessness. He likes that he gives his little Marinette her first bottle feed in the morning and likes that he is in charge of bath time in the evening. He thinks a different nickname is needed though and there is only one other way the name will shorten. Baby Mari giggles when he informs her of her nickname. His heart is feels so full.


	5. Babies? BABIES!

Hello Adrien, goodbye Pixie…  
Gabriel stares at the hospital’s gaudy, ancient, linoleum floor. He doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to deal with the squalling curse next to him and doesn’t know what to do. The nurse is still talking to him but he can’t be bothered to listen, he grabs the bundle next to him and turns to leave, acutely aware that his Pixie isn’t with him and will never be again. It isn’t till he is in the car he even questions if the baby is okay to come home.

He realises half way through the next day that he is going to be a terrible father. He can’t help but hate the boy. He plans to have him adopted, leaves him in the care of staff and tells himself its better this way.

Adoption is slow process, months later the nuisance is still in his home. He is going to fire the maid staff. He is working! Why is this little brat being allowed to make so much noise? He enters the baby’s room swiftly trying to ignore the hand painted pictures on the wall and the lasting scent of his deceased wife’s favourite perfume. Approaching the crib he looks down at his son. Now he is here he realises he has no idea what to do. What do children need? How to diapers even work? When was last time he was fed? How many times a day do you even feed a baby? It’s at this point that Adrien works out someone strange is in his space. Crying halted for the moment; a stare pierces Gabriel that he thought he would never see again. Adrien has his mother’s eyes, from the shape, to the size on his face, to the flecks of gold that always reminded Gabriel of a fireworks display around the pupil. Gabriel can barely breathe and time seems to stop.

He only comes back to reality when the maid comes into the room. He bats away her apologies, leaves the room, and runs to the phone. The adoption is cancelled and some hours later he sits reading a book on parenting when he should be designing. He has no idea what he is doing but maybe it’s time to stop running.

Mischief managed, tails of tiny Marinette…  
Tom is panicking and kind of mystified but mostly panicking. How in heaven’s name has he managed to lose a two year old that he was fairly sure was strapped into her pram? They had a lovely walk, she had in the pram during the walk, he had heard her giggling…. So… WHERE IS SHE?

Panicked he backtracks, following the route he had just walked, listening for any sign of his daughters high pitched babbling. He was so sure she was strapped into the pram! Why didn’t he just ask Sabine to check it as he was leaving? Oh GOD! WHAT IS HE GOING TO DO!

So involved in his search for hearing her he almost misses the tell-tale hint of raven black hair as he passes the near-by park. THERE SHE IS! His tiny daughter seems utterly unworried, babbling away to an old gentleman as he sits on bench in the park. The gentleman is bemused but smiling, listening attentively despite the fact that Marinette really can’t form proper words yet.

“Mari! Come here darling!” Tom calls to his child. She turns and waves, giggling like a mad thing and beckoning him over with chubby, tiny, fingers. He approaches the scene, trying to calm down. Marinette isn’t really old enough for him to get angry at her over this and, after all, she’s never done this before and isn’t aware that the whole “escaping from the pram and walking away while daddy isn’t looking” thing is a bad thing. He calms his buzzing emotions, takes a deep breath, and decides he will try and explain this to his little daughter later. He makes a note to talk to Sabine; she always knows what to say.

“Thank you for keeping an eye on her” he says to the gentleman. The gentleman, in return, tips his hat and tells him it’s no trouble. Tom picks up his daughter, encourages her to wave goodbye and turns to leave. As he does a ladybug alights on his precious daughter’s nose and a smile returns to his face as his laughter and his daughter’s giggles intertwine.


	6. Unraveling and stitching together

A voice in the dark, an old name of my lips....  
Gabriel wakes again in a sweat with Annie’s name of his lips. These dreams have been happening for weeks, nothing stops them. He is a single father for heaven’s sake! Sleeping is meant to be the easy bit! That night is the first night he can remember the whispers though. Maybe they came earlier but that’s certainly the first time he could remember them once he was awake and lucid.

The dream always starts the same. He and Annie sit at a table, in the dining room of house he built for them, trading easy smiles. The morning sun shines brilliantly through the net curtains of the window, lighting up all the copper highlights in her hair, firework green eyes and nose crinkled from her smile and her laugh. She is older than he remembers her being; the dream a vision of the future that would never be. The doors open and a boy walks in, and though much older than the toddler who sleeps two rooms over, he knows it’s Adrien. Easy smile resting on his child’s face he comes to sit at the table. It’s everything he has ever wanted but somewhere in his mind he recalls it will all go wrong soon.

Before Adrien can take his seat though he brinks out of existence; literally in a second he is gone. Gabriel watches in horror as darkness fills the door and begins to leach into the room, taking all colours with it. He turns back to Annie, to tell her to run, to tell her he loves her but all sound catches in his throat at the sight of her. She sits in the chair smiling as before but she looks dead, white-grey skin and closed eyes. She dissolves slowly, shriveling away to nothing, along with the colour and light from the scene and then the whispers reaches his ears. 

They whisper from all parts of his life and are usually all of a theme but they differ from night to night. Tonight is probably the second worst combination: “This is your fault, you were never worth staying around for” says his father’s voice, dark and scary like it was when he was a child. “Why was this worth me dying again?” Marinette’s voice asks, a mockery of the warm and bright tone he actually remembers and then there is the voice that has him racing back to consciousness “This is what you did Felix! You put on the ring! You just had to have that kiss and you took it from her when you should have saved her! You should have saved my best friend!” Annie’s voice hurts him on a cellular level. The voice is horrid, acidic and hollow, the dulcet tones of his love turned to a sharp shriek that tears at all of him.

But just before he wakes a new whisper comes…. One he cannot move away from, cannot be unheard and cannot escape from. Its high pitched like a child but the words hold power, age and influence. “I can fix this” it says, honey tones that are both calming but sharp. “I can make it right, bring her back AND give you all the power in the world Felix and all you have to do is say yes”

This feels, at the time, like the chance to begin again to Gabriel… Looking back it was almost his end.

Sweet laughter in the light, a treasure on her birthday.....  
Tom wakes early every day. He’s a baker, five in the morning starts are routine now but this morning he wakes even earlier than usual. He clicks off the alarm and sneaks out of bed. Today is his wife’s birthday and his present, well along with all the things he got for Mari to give to her, is to relax, sleep in, read and play with Marinette. All of these things are her favorite things to do and all of them have been lacking lately; the bad side to running a successful bakery right in the heart of Paris.

He creeps downstairs slowly becoming aware that he may not be the only one up in the house at four in the morning. That’s odd to say the least… Break-ins where never a concern when he was younger and aren’t still for him personally now but he isn’t the only one in the house to worry about. Sabine is fine, he knows, but his daughter may not be. Briefly he panics but quickly calms. His daughter should be in her room, in a high walled toddler bed with a shut door.

He steps quickly into the kitchen looming in the door way and scanning every inch of the scene. The light is on, something he knows he turned off before bed but otherwise the room seems empty and not a thing is out of place. He steps into the room, mounting tension in the weirdness of the scene causing a spike of dread in his stomach. The silence is now eerie and pregnant, like a horror film just before the jump….. BANG! The noise causes his heart to stop and then… His little daughter appears from out of a cupboard, frying pan in hand. Tom blinks, Mari blinks. His daughter is an escape artist and a brilliant one at that. At least her hi-jinks have a sweet purpose, Tom thinks as his tiny child hands him the breakfast implement with an impish smile, but he can’t help but worry what’s going to happen when she’s a teenager.

Sabine has a lovely birthday, Tom and Mari makes sure of that.


End file.
